This exhibition comprises three rooms of new works by Gerhard Richter from his current series of strip pictures and glass objects, most of which were created specifically for this show.

For his Strips series, begun in 2011, Richter uses one of his own earlier works as point of departure and source material. He digitally dissected his 1990 Abstract Painting (724-4) into 4,096 sections, and mirrors, multiplies and recombines these details, finally printing them as pictures composed of horizontal stripes, in various formats up to 10 metres in length. These works bear witness to the unceasing creativity of this artist, who was born in Dresden in 1932. Using computer-controlled image-making processes to reinterpret his own abstract painting, Gerhard Richter thereby achieves surprising pictorial inventions.

Glass has played an important role in Gerhard Richter’s work since the 1960s. His most recent work in this medium, which is to have its first public showing in the Dresden exhibition, is a further development of his 2002/2010 sculpture, 9 Upright Standing Panes, which will be on view concurrently in the permanent collection in the Albertinum.

The new reverse glass paintings, now in a large format for the first time, are also the result of such observant and controlled coincidence. Richter has applied lacquer paints to a smooth surface, mixed them with a palette knife and then left them for awhile. The colours run into one another, intermingle and coalesce into fantastic structures. Finally, Richter presses a glass plate onto the damp paint, thus fixing the momentary result on the surface of the glass. The dynamics and the random nature of the merging colours play a decisive role in this creative process.

The exhibition Gerhard Richter. Strips & Glass has been organised in association with the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, where it will be on show from 18 January until 21 April 2014.